


Seeing the False and Searching for the True

by dedougal



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, cotton candy bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedougal/pseuds/dedougal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is standing outside in the rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing the False and Searching for the True

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt water. I have a thing for wet boys but this ended up so far from that. Title from the poem 'The Confirmation' by Edwin Muir.

Stiles is standing outside in the rain.

He’s cold, soaked through. His hoodie is clinging to him, to the lines of his long, lean body. His jeans are just as wet, like he’d run here, not even bothered to get in his precious jeep, and now he’s here Stiles has got no idea what to do next. His chest is heaving and Derek’s aches too.

Derek had said no to himself. Derek had said no way, no how. Derek had said he didn’t deserve this and buried heart, soul, mind, burn of want- He had thought he’d buried it unfathomed oceans deep. Whatever locks he’d used, weights he’d tied to it, they’ve melted into dust like so much of his life. There’s only one thing real and true in his life right now. Only one thing that matters.

And he’s standing, outside, in the rain. And he’s crying.

Derek knows he wouldn’t be able to tell that Stiles was crying if it wasn’t for the fact he was attuned to everything about Stiles. Every heightened sense drinks in Stiles, like he’d found a fountain in the desert and he was parched. Stiles lifts his eyes, catches Derek watching him, and Derek is drowning, sudden and without any knowledge he’d dropped off the edge of the cliff.

He’s outside, off the porch and beside Stiles in a moment, rain slicking over his body. Stiles is shivering and his skin is slowly loosing colour with every shaking breath. With every fibre of his being, Derek wants to wrap around him, keep him warm, stop the slow trickle of salt water down those pale and hollow cheeks. But Derek isn’t able to take that final step, to finally allow Stiles’ scent to saturate him, to inundate him, to submerge and be born anew.

“Did you know?” Stiles is yelling. He’s angry and worried and he needs to take it out on someone and Derek is there for him. “Did you know what was going to happen? Couldn’t you hear it?”

His dad is in hospital, looking smaller and breakable. His dad will be fine, a new lease of life, careful recuperation. There’s nothing to worry about. There’s everything to worry about. “I couldn’t.” Derek thinks his voice sounds like broken glass. The words feel like he’s dragging himself across the shattered remains of the bottle he knows Stiles’ dad shoved to the ground when he fell. He wishes he could have heard the stutter, the stop. The indescribable knowledge that a heart wasn’t beating quite right.

Stiles has drops of water on his eyelashes, where tears and rain mingle. He’s breathing more evenly suddenly. Derek can hear his heart, the syncopated two step, fast – too fast – then slow and steady, a baseline he can run his life on. “You’re wet,” Stiles tells him, like he has just realised it’s raining.

Derek kisses him. The world stops for a moment just like Stiles heart stops. Once. Skips. Restarts thundering. In the silence, Derek couldn’t hear his own heart either. Stiles’ lips are cold which makes the inside of his mouth a furnace when Derek licks inside, desperate to show Stiles what is and what’s real and what matters. His hands cradle the back of Stiles’ head, search for purchase in the stubble, before mirroring each other in a slow sweep down Stiles’ neck, his shoulders, his bare, goose-pimpled arms to land, firm and grounded on his hips. Stiles ends up holding onto his biceps, blunt fingernails digging in like some parody of claws. Stiles kisses like a wild thing set free, all teeth and tongue and pressure. Derek swallows it, takes him, feels Stiles warming against him.

They are standing, in the rain, outside. The house is cold but dry behind him. Stiles’ dad is still in a bed, surrounding by machines that beep out the steady thrum of his heart. Derek doesn’t need a machine for his ears to fill with the steadiness of Stiles as he reaches out a hand to hold Derek closer, like a man clings to a raft after a shipwreck.


End file.
